Daniel Aitken

Online content producer

Recent articles

Wildfires

The Colby Fire burned 1,952 acres in January 2014, mostly on the south-facing slopes of the San Gabriel Mountain foothills above Azusa and Glendora. It damaged eight structures and destroyed 15, including four homes on North Glendora Avenue, according to post fire assessments. Since then the landscape in the area has changed as hillsides regrow but some destroyed homes remain as reminders of personal and historical...

Parades

This interactive shows how several Rose Parade floats looked during a road test prior to being decorated and how they look the day before the 2015 Rose Parade.Trouble viewing this interactive? View before and after shots of Rose Parade floats directly.• Read More: Complete coverage of the 2015...

Droughts

In these before-and-after images, full water levels are visible around Lake Oroville in Oroville, California and Folsom Lake in El Folsom, California on July 20, 2011 and low water levels are visible on August 19, 2014.As the severe drought in California continues for a third straight year, water levels in the state’s lakes and reservoirs are reaching historic lows. Lake Oroville is currently at 32 percent of its total 3,537,577 acre feet.

Space exploration

Just in time for the Curiosity Rover’s two-year anniversary on Mars, Caltech has released a video on YouTube telling the story of the rover’s journey to, and on, the Red Planet.The video, “Our Curiosity,” is narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Felicia Day, with an original score from Austin Wintory.“We didn’t just send a robot to Mars. We sent the most essential, most valuable, most human piece of...

Floods

A 30-inch water main that ruptured near UCLA on Tuesday afternoon sent millions of gallons of water onto Sunset Boulevard and the campus, flooding the recently remodeled Pauley Pavilion sports area, among other structures, officials said.UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said Wednesday that he expected damages to the campus to run in the tens of millions of dollars.The main break is the largest in the city in five years, and LADWP crews continued to work at the scene on Wednesday on...

Droughts

This animated image shows droughts across the United States and how they have progressed over the last decade.Included in the graphic is the latest drought that has fully consumed California. Having trouble viewing the image on your mobile device? Try this link: United States Drought Animation

Technology

In March of 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist, wrote a proposal for what would later become the World Wide Web. 25 years later, a lot has changed.Here is a look at how 6 notable websites looked in the past contrasted with how they appear today.You can view the history of more websites with the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which has saved 398 billion web pages so far, according to its website.